Norway: no reason to hound Apple over DRM any longer

Norway's consumer watchdog group has nothing left to complain about after …

Norway is finally off Apple's back now that the company has decided to ditch its FairPlay DRM on all of its music tracks. The DRM-free tracks (iTunes Plus) are now compatible with any music player that can play AAC files and are therefore free of the restrictive iPod tie-in that has annoyed so many customers. "We have no reason to pursue them anymore," Norway's consumer mediator Bj�rn Erik Thon told AFP.

Norway's consumer watchdog group had been pursuing Apple over the DRM on iTunes Store music since early 2006, when the Consumer Council of Norway filed a complaint with the Consumer Ombudsman of Norway alleging violations of the country's Marketing Control Act. In its complaint, the consumer group pointed to Apple's terms and conditions that prohibit buyers from compromising the copy protection so that the tracks can be played on portable devices other than the iPod.

Since then, EU Commissioner for Consumer Protection Meglena Kuneva has spoken out against the tie-in between the iPod and the iTunes Store, and consumer groups in both France and Germany joined Norway's push to get Apple to ditch its DRM. When Apple first announced that it was rolling out DRM-free tracks from EMI in 2007, the Norwegian Consumer Council was pleased, but wanted more. As did we all, of course.

That brings us to today. Thon had threatened to take Apple to court in late 2008 if the company didn't do something about its restrictions soon, but as most Apple fans know, Phil Schiller announced this January at the 2009 Macworld Expo that DRM would be completely banished from the music side of the iTunes Store by April of this year. At that time, Apple expects all 10 million of its songs to be DRM-free and released at the higher-quality 256kbps iTunes Plus bitrate. This policy change applies across the board to all four major music labels (Universal Music Group, Sony BMG, Warner Music Group, and EMI) as well as thousands of independent labels.

With such a significant change, Norway and the gang apparently have no more complaints. Thon told the AFP that he planned to inform Apple of the decision this week, but something tells us that if it's in the media, Apple already knows.